Edinburgh is to launch its new tourism strategy next week, projecting progress for the visitor sector up to 2020, including a "stretching" growth target for the rest of the decade.
Billed as the city's most significant tourism development plan for 20 years the strategy comes as the UK's leading expert in the marketing of tourism destinations, Professor Alan Fyall of Bournemouth University, warned that the capital's "minuscule" city marketing budget of £1.7 million must be dramatically increased if the city is to remain competitive on the national and international stage.
The Edinburgh Tourism Strategy, led by the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group (ETAG), will be unveiled by Tourism Minister Fergus Ewing on Wednesday, and is the outcome of an exhaustive business consultation process "to build a consensus among stakeholders about what we can achieve".
Robin Worsnop, ETAG's chairman said that the new strategy would "lock in the progress" made by Edinburgh despite the recession, and "identify the potential for further growth that requires continued investment by the public and private sector."
He said: "The crisis of 2008 has bitten everyone but Edinburgh has proved pretty resilient. It seems 2011 was reasonably healthy, and [hotel] occupancy rates remained high, visitor numbers increased, Edinburgh Airport had their best ever year, as did Edinburgh Castle.
"But we felt we needed to come up with something to protect the industry's progress and build it further. This has been a very extensive process; 67 stakeholder meetings took place in building this strategy, and the consensus has been very good".
Worsnop pointed to an array of positive signs for the capital, including the addition for 1200 hotel bedrooms, 77% hotel occupancy rates, and the extension of the Edinburgh International Conference Centre. In the years since the last strategy, tourism revenue in Edinburgh has grown from £250m in 1990 to over £1 billion in 2010. Tourism jobs had risen from 12,000 to 32,000, occupancy went from 55% to 77% and the number or hotel rooms has doubled.
ETAG's case for increased investment in the city's capacity to attract visitors to boost jobs and growth is firmly backed by Fyall, who said a marketing budget of £1.7m, less than 0.2% of turnover, was insufficient to compete in future. "It should be at least three times as much as that," he said.
"Edinburgh appeals to young people and to visitors from the BRIC countries, but like all mature markets it has not always spoken with one voice and it faces a threat from the big English northern cities of Newcastle, Manchester and Leeds. They have woken up to tourism's potential and boosted themselves with far bigger marketing budgets."
Lucy Bird, chief executive of the council subsidiary Marketing Edinburgh, said that a new business plan including a significantly increased marketing budget would be proposed to the body's board in March.
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